Hurricane Katrina survivor calls Lubbock 'safe haven'

Sunday

Aug 30, 2015 at 8:55 PM

Sarah Rafique

Crammed inside an airplane with nearly 600 other people, Deb Forbs still didn't know where she was headed.

"They wanted to take us to Houston," said Forbs, who was among thousands of residents evacuating New Orleans days after Hurricane Katrina hit 10 years ago. "But they said Houston had so many people there that they didn't know if they had enough room for us."

When government officials finally told the passengers, "We're taking y'all to this place called Lubbock, Texas," Forbs recalled wondering, "What's a Lubbock?"

In the 10 years since her childhood home was destroyed by the hurricane, Forbs said Lubbock has been her safe haven.

"I was tired of running from the hurricane," said Forbs, who is 59-year-old. "I was tired of running from the water."

The flood

When Forbs woke up at 6 a.m., she noticed water slowly seeping into the living room floor.

Forbs opened her front door, but before she could slam it shut the flood waters began filling her one-story home.

Websy pleaded for her to help him push the door closed, but it was helpless. The pressure from the water was too strong.

"Then he hurried up and tried to push me in the attic," Forbs said. "By the time we got (there), the water was up to the gutters just that quick."

The house her brother was born in - that she spent most of her life in - had been through several hurricanes.

Her father even built a cover in their attic, filled with survival supplies - water, crackers, flashlights and a couple of old suitcases packed with clothes that didn't' fit her anymore - in case her family ever had to seek shelter from hurricanes.

Still, their home, which was located in the Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans, had never experienced any damage until Katrina.

"We lived here even when Hurricane Betsy (hit) in 1965 and we lived in this same house but we didn't get any water," Forbs said. "Had it not been for that (levee breaking) we wouldn't have got any water."

Within an hour of waking up, Forbs' home was underwater.

Websy used a crowbar and hammer he found in the attic to create a large hole in the roof so they could get a look at what was going on outside. All they saw were rooftops peaking out from the water.

Forbs' daughter, Brandy Mouton, was living with her in New Orleans after giving birth two weeks before the storm hit.

She tried to convince her mom to seek shelter with her and her newborn, but Forbs didn't want to leave her home.

Now, Forbs was trapped in the attic as Websy tried to convince her to float to safety on a large object - a door if they could find one. But, Forbs, whose right leg was in a cast after a recent surgery, wasn't buying it.

"You see how high that water was and he wanted to float on a door. For real? I don't think so," Forbs said. "He said, 'Well give me the phone,' I had the phone in a pouch around my neck. He drops my phone in the water. I said, 'Look what you did."

With her leg in a cast and no way to call for help, Forbs listened to the radio and wondered what to do next.

"You could hear them saying it's too late to evacuate now. Just stay in your homes and somebody will try and rescue you," she said. "We didn't know anything."

The rescue

Forbs heard her belongings clanking against one another as they floated in the water that filled the rooms beneath her.

"The water would knock stuff over, so you could hear everything just floating up underneath the attic because the water was right here. You were kind of halfway sitting in it and you can hear it," she said. "You couldn't go to sleep. I was scared to go to sleep because I didn't know what to expect. All we did was just sit there."

After 17 1/2 hours stuck in the dark, desolate attic, Forbs couldn't help but doze off.

She woke up to a bright light and the voice of someone yelling, "Is anybody here? Does anybody hear me?"

The voice grew closer.

"Is there anybody here? Does anybody hear me," the voice said. "If you do you need to call out to us so we can rescue you."

She opened her eyes and was greeted by a German Shepherd standing on the roof, peering into the hole on the top of her house.

"It was ... a big ol' Harbor Police boat," she said. "The Harbor Police sticks his head out and goes, 'How many of you are in there?'"

Websy told police it was just the two of them and her rain-soaked cat that she would be forced to leave behind.

The rescuers asked if they knew of any neighbors who might still be trapped in their homes. Forbs told them about the man who lived by himself next door. He was in his 80s and disabled. Forbs said she later found out he drowned.

The rescue boat pulled up to the gutters along her house as they pulled her out of the attic.

"We just walked down the roof and he said, 'Ma'am, don't worry about trying to close (the hole in the roof),'" she said.

Her house and her life in New Orleans were gone.

She didn't know where she was headed and neither did her family.

Forbs' daughter, Brandy Mouton, fled the storm three days before it hit. She was staying with her newborn in the convention center of a packed hotel in St. Francisville, La.

"The morning of the storm I got up and everything was fine and then the next thing you know, the levees broke and I was like, 'Oh no,' " she said. "They had big TV's at the hotel and everyone was walking by and they were talking about how ... the water was up to the roofs and I was like, 'Oh no. My mom's there.' "

Finding shelter

It was past midnight and dark outside as they entered the rescue boat, but Forbs took one more look at her house before they drove away.

Her car was upside down, floating in the water as it rested on top of a fence.

The rescue crew dropped Forbs and Websy off at the edge of St. Claude Avenue Bridge in New Orleans so they could continue looking for more survivors.

Forbs was wearing pajamas and still had rollers in her hair from the night before. With her right leg still in its cast and only a sock on her other foot, Forbs hobbled through the water to the other side of the bridge.

"All I tried to do was get to safety and get out of that water because that water was coming all in my cast and it was so bad. It was stinking. It was rotten," she said. "You could see bodies floating in the water. ... What were you going to do? It just was sad."

Once they got to the other side of the bridge, a military vehicle picked them up and drove them several blocks to a three-story high school housing evacuees.

No one knew how long they'd have to live in the temporary shelter or when they'd get to take a shower eat a hot meal.

Websy scoured the high school searching for food to last until they found better safety.

"We would share like crackers and stuff," she said. "And we had batteries and we had flashlights (but) when you go to the bathroom, the toilets didn't work, nothing worked in there. ... When you go to the bathroom, my husband had to go with me because (other men) were coming in the bathroom with the women to rape them."

Leaving home

Even though she was no longer trapped in her attic, Forbs said it took five days before she felt rescued from the hurricane that ravished her hometown.

Eventually, the military announced they were taking people to the airport to seek shelter in neighboring towns and states.

The flight from New Orleans to Lubbock felt like forever. The airplane circled overhead one last time before finally landing at Reese Technology Center.

The evacuees exited the back of the plane and got their first glimpse of Lubbock.

"They had all these dogs and all these military and all these police officers with these big hats on their head," she said. "It was like, what in the world? Where are we?"

After nearly a week of living on edge, Forbs finally took a shower and changed into clean clothes.

"They brought me to the hospital thing at Reese. They cut the cast open and my leg was infected so I had to get two tetanus shots and a shot in my leg," she said. "Then they cleaned it up real good and wrapped it up real good and put one of them boots on it and ... I was fine."

Several days after the hurricane, Mouton finally confirmed that her mother was alive.

"I actually found out about her ... after the storm through the Red Cross information about people being rescued. It was some online thing. I could look up her name that way," Mouton said. "I was feeling relieved because everybody around me kept asking me. Once I saw her name, I felt a lot better that she was safe. It was her name and it said Texas, but that was it. It didn't give me a bunch of information. It was like, 'OK, she's alive and she's in Texas.'"

Safe haven

Back in New Orleans, Forbs unloaded all of her belongings into the front yard, trying to salvage what little she could.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency gave them a trailer to live in, but she didn't want to stay.

"It was crazy," she said. "We were able to get my brother to fix it and move out so now somebody else is living there. It doesn't even look like (my old home) anymore."

It took four years to finally fix and sell her home. Now 10 years later, Forbs said many of the homes in her Lower 9th Ward neighborhood were still blighted and boarded up.

Since the storm, Lubbock has become her safe haven.

"This was my old home," she said as she held photos of her home in New Orleans. "This is my new home."

Within a month after the hurricane, Forbs was slowly settling into Lubbock. She found a job at a local insurance company and moved into a duplex on Boston Avenue in September 2005. By June 2006, Habitat for Humanity and its volunteers built her a new home.

Forbs still lives in that same house and has watched the community grow.

"I wanted to give back to the neighborhood so because of that I joined the family selection committee for Habitat," she said. "All these houses from my house on down, we helped build all those houses."

Although Forbs said she isn't where she wants to be, she's also not where she used to be.

Before the storm, Mouton's children got to see their grandmother whenever they wanted. Now, Mouton, who still lives in Louisiana, said she's lucky if her mom can visit her once a year.

"She had a lot of anxiety, PTSD-type symptoms because of what she saw and what she experienced," Mouton said. "I feel like the storm took her away from me and I've never been able to get her back physically because of it."

Forbs works at the same company that hired her when she moved to Lubbock in 2005. She hopes to put in another 10 years so she can retire and move back to Louisiana.

"I've always been the type of person that I don't take (things) for granted and since Hurricane Katrina, I'm telling you, when I tell you I live every day to its fullest, believe that," she said. "I'm just glad that God blessed me to have this life because I was supposed to be dead. I really was. I wasn't supposed to come through that."

sarah.rafique@lubbockonline.com

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